With a new management team in charge this year do you see Kerry play a radically different way in 2019, and what’s the one key area Peter Keane must priotise for a serious overhaul?

PETER Keane will be very much his own man but like his predecessor he will be pragmatic and will forego any notion of playing ‘the Kerry way’ if that’s what it takes to get results. Building a sound defensive platform is the absolute starting point and his minor teams showed that Keane favours defenders who defend. Beyond that, whatever new rules come into being will affect things a little, but we can expect Kerry to play a fairly conventional structure with an emphasis on man-marking and direct ball.

RADICALLY different? No probably not. That said I’d expect Peter Keane to have a more clear idea of what it is he wants his team to do. The switch in playing style between the Munster championship and the All-Ireland series last year was striking under Éamonn Fitzmaurice and that’s something Keane will surely hope to avoid. We’d expect a greater focus on defence, there just has to be after the last couple of years, with a focus on preparation and the technical side of defending and tackling.

IF Kerry are set up like the way Keane set up his Minor teams then expect a lot of ‘front foot’ football. The county wants to see more of it as attempts at defensive set-ups (notwithstanding the 2014 All-Ireland success against Donegal) have generally not worked out well for the county. The county’s psyche is not to feel inferior to anyone and a lot of the frustration from the stands and terraces has come from Kerry not playing the brand of football it has been traditionally associated with.

I feel an area where Peter will most certainly be focusing on is our set-up when we don’t have the ball. Far too often in games last year we were left very open at the back, particularly down the centre. One trademark of Keane’s teams is that they are very difficult to breakdown which I believe is something Kerry need to work on. Donie Buckley’s expertise in this department will be a huge addition.

THE old sporting adage still holds true: forwards win games, backs win championships. Through Keane’s tenure as Minor manager Kerry’s success was built on a solid defensive platform, with an average concession rate of 1-9 per game. At the elite level such tallies will be impossible to sustain but the philosophy should be the same. Too many defenders are being judged on their attacking qualities, but it’s no coincidence that most of Kerry’s All-Ireland titles were won with some of the game’s best ever defenders